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An Articulation of Hacking's Philosophy of the Human Sciences UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ MAKING UP PEOPLE AND STYLES OF SCIENTIFIC REASONING: AN ARTICULATION OF HACKING'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES a dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in PHILOSOPHY by Lourdes Mercedes Ortiz Bautista June 2017 The Dissertation of Lourdes Mercedes Ortiz Bautista is approved: _______________________________________ Professor Paul A. Roth, Chair _______________________________________ Professor Janette Dinishak _______________________________________ Professor Jonathan Tsou _______________________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by Lourdes Mercedes Ortiz Bautista 2017 Contents Page Abstract v Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 Chapter 1. Making Up People: Philosophical Background and Analytical Framework 8 1.1. Philosophical Background 9 1.1.1. Relevant Kinds 10 1.1.2. Dynamic nominalism 16 1.1.3. Power/Knowledge and the Genealogies of the Subject 21 1.1.4. Looping Effects 24 1.2. Making Up People: An Analytic Framework 33 1.2.1. Five-Vector Framework 33 1.2.2. Engines of Discovery 37 1.2.3. Social Components 39 Chapter 2. Making Up People: Examples and Complementary Notions 42 2.1. MUP Exemplars 42 2.1.1. Homosexuality 43 2.1.2. Criminality 46 2.1.3. Child Abuse 49 2.1.4. Fugue 51 2.1.5.Multiple Personality 55 2.2. Background notions 60 2.2.1. Action under a description 60 2.2.2. Causal Knowledge and Prototypes 63 2.2.3. Transient Mental Illness and Ecological Niches 67 2.3. Retractions and Revisions: Hacking’s Semantic Resolution to the 70 Problems of Kinds Chapter 3. The Styles of Scientific Reasoning 79 3.1. Background 81 3.2. The historical emergence of the styles 87 3.2.1. The mathematical style 88 3.2.2. The hypothetical modeling style 89 3.2.3. The Experimental Style 91 3.2.4. The Statistical style 93 3.2.5. The Taxonomic Style 97 3.2.6. The Historico-Genetic Style 100 3.3. Philosophical theses 101 3.3.1. Self-Authentication 102 3.3.2. Stabilization of the Styles 104 3.3.3. Ontological Debates 109 3.4. Making Up People and the Styles of Scientific Reasoning 110 3.4.1. Logic 111 3.4.2. Epistemology 113 3.4.3. Ontology 115 iii Chapter 4. Criticisms & Replies 120 4.1. Critique 1: The looping effect is not unique to "human kinds" 120 4.2. Critique 2: Some human kinds are stable 132 4.3. Critique 3: Hacking's semantic strategy cannot reconcile the competing explanatory claims of the medical and the biopsychosocial models 139 4.4. Looping effects and MUP: are kinds of people moving targets? 148 Final Remarks. Hacking's Philosophy of The Human Sciences and 154 Making Up People Bibliography 157 iv Abstract Making Up People and Styles of Scientific Reasoning: An Articulation of Hacking's Philosophy of the Human Sciences Lourdes M. Ortiz Bautista This work offers a comprehensive reading of Hacking's project on making up people. Making up people refers to practices involved in the scientific classification of people, which may implicitly assume or foster the existence of human types. Hacking's works on human kinds have been presented in a fragmentary manner for over the last 30 years. Some of its central notions, such as "human kind" and "looping effects", have been critically received as stand alone notions within the debate between social constructivism and scientific realism concerning psychiatric categories. Despite his critical stance on social constructivism and his proposed reconciliation between social constructivism and scientific realism, Hacking's work has been read as a challenge to scientific realism. Hacking's account of human kinds in terms of the presence of looping effects, alongside his analyses of various classifications that have been revised and ultimately abandoned in the history of psychiatry, have contributed to that interpretation. Hacking's MUP, however, addresses the way in which the scientific classification of people works, rather than whether mental illness classifications are founded in nature or not. By focusing on classification from a historicist stance, Hacking is able to reconfigure the philosophy of the sciences in a distinct and unprecedented manner, presenting an original account on historical epistemology and ontology. It is not one argument, but a comprehensive reconfiguration of the philosophy of the sciences, which allows Hacking to go beyond the divide between scientific realism and social constructivism. This work brings together a larger set of notions to characterize Hacking's account of MUP, makes explicit the philosophical background on classification that supports it, and explores relevant connections to other aspects of Hacking's work, remarkably, his alternative project on the Styles of Scientific Reasoning. On the basis of such a comprehensive reading, it v responds to four representative criticisms. By assembling the elements of Hacking's MUP in a comprehensive and consistent picture, this work shows the extent to which it represents a major contribution to the philosophy of the sciences, introducing a distinct approach to the analysis of scientific concepts and a novel vision of the human sciences. Keywords: human kinds, making up people, looping effects, psychiatric categories, scientific categories, styles of scientific reasoning, relevant kinds, historical ontology, historical epistemology, dynamic nominalism vi Acknowledgements I would like to thank my committee members, Professors Paul A. Roth, Janette Dinishak, and Jonathan Tsou, for all the time and effort that they put into reading various versions of my work, providing me with valuable feedback and critical insights. I'm particularly grateful to Paul Roth, who has been a source of support throughout my entire graduate studies. I also would like to thank all the people who have engaged with me in the discussion of different aspects of this work, particularly the participants of conferences organized at Louisiana State University, the University of Tampa and Stanford wherein I presented different stages of development of this work. The members of the American Association of Mexican Philosophers have provided me with an academic community and continuous support. Going back to the very beginning, I would like to thank Ian Hacking and the other participants in his seminars on scientific rationality and natural kinds at UCSC. Hacking´s seminar inspired me to explore further the ideas developed in this work. I'd also like to thank the staff at the UCSC Philosophy Department, such as Lynn Galiste, Heather Henderson, and specially Holly Clausnitzer. Their help was necessary for navigating the bureaucracy of the University system. I am grateful to Professors Rick Otte in the Philosophy Department and Catherine Cooper of the Psychology Department, who helped me to get this project off of the ground in the initial stages. I am grateful to all the professors who helped shape my philosophical insights, thanks to whom I was able to come to UCSC. Additionally I'd like to thank family and friends, who were there for me during this process: my lovely and supportive partner, Sam Badger, who also helped me to improve the expression of my ideas in English; my sister and brother in law Maria C. Ortiz-Abeyta and Alfred Abeyta, who provided financial and emotional support; my other sister and brother Martha and Leopoldo, who were always curious and willing to engage with me in vii conversations relevant to my philosophical growth; Joanna Badger for securing me a place to live and all the nutritious food. Many friends lent me a hand once and over again during the writing process and were a source of inspiration: Andrew C. Delunas, Evan Lam, Kaija Mortensen, Yuriditzi Pascacio, Carolina Collepardo, Erandi Coutiño, Guillermo Torices, and Rodrigo Sanchez. Finally, I´d like to thank UC-Mexus and CONACyT for the fellowship they granted me with, which made it possible for me to study at UCSC. viii Introduction Philosophers of science have by and large neglected the social sciences in their analysis and models of scientific knowledge. In particular, philosophical analyses of the scientific study of human beings were nearly nonexistent until recent years. The growth of the brain and behavioral sciences has made it urgent to engage in such philosophical study. Philosophers of special sciences such as Psychiatry, Psychology, and the Cognitive Neurosciences have made progress examining traditional themes in the context of the newer bodies of knowledge produced in their respective disciplines. Noteworthy within these recent philosophies are works on scientific explanation, natural kinds, and scientific realism (e.g., Bechtel 2008, Craver 2007, Cooper 2005, Cummins 1977, Gold and Stoljar 1999, Khalidi 1998, Kendler, et al, 2011, Kincaid and Sullivan, eds., 2014, and Murphy 2006). Ian Hacking's works on human kinds or kinds of people have been most widely received within the academic spaces created by such studies (especially, Hacking 1999 and 2002a). Hacking's works on the scientific classification of people, however, introduce a distinct approach to engage in the philosophical analysis of the sciences, including the sciences concerned with the study of human beings. Such an approach has not been clearly acknowledged in the philosophical literature. In this work I piece together the different elements that comprise Hacking's account of kinds of people, make explicit the philosophical background which supports it and offer some responses to representative criticisms of the account on the basis of my articulation. By assembling the elements of Hacking's account in a comprehensive and consistent picture, I show the extent to which his proposal represents a major contribution to the philosophical analysis of the human sciences. Hacking's studies of "making up people" highlight the ways in which scientific classification enables the identification of people as being of a kind, opening and closing new possibilities of being. The idea that there are human types supported by scientific knowledge is not entirely new.
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